


Seven words to love you by

by BIFF1



Category: Bad Education (UK TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Underage Drinking, Underage Smoking, backgroung stephan/frank, broken arm, form k kids, hit and run, slowish burn, very little angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:21:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25888012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BIFF1/pseuds/BIFF1
Summary: re-post after deletion.Jing and Mitchell start on a slow road to something that could maybe be the best thing that's ever happened to them. A story filled with general teenage confusion helped along by the fact that Mr. Wickers is probably the worst teacher to ever exist.A prompt to use seven randomly generated words.
Relationships: Mitchell Harper/Jing Hua, Stephen Carmichael/Frank Grayson
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	1. Fiasco

**Author's Note:**

> trigger warning: vomiting   
> sorry

They ended up sitting next to each other on a whim, he on the aisle next to Rem Dogg, and her between him and Katie.

She had an uneasy feeling about this, why would they need parental consent to see an educational movie. Alfie had of course just paid for all the tickets and ushered them into the theatre without so much as thinking about the possible reasons for the rating.

There was a movement at her arm, and looking down she saw that Mitchell was offering her some of his popcorn.

“thank you.” she whispered, taking a handful of popcorn and trying to ready herself for whatever fiasco this particular outing was going to result in.

The trailers were for various degrees of horror movies.

Jing leans over, her shoulder slipping behind Mitchell's, “I thought this was meant to be educational?”

“I told Alfie it was like Spiderman.” he concedes.

“And it isn't.”

“no.” is all he says, but there is a laugh in his tone that worries her. She has no time to ask what it actually is because the lights go down to leave them in the dark.

She watches with wide eyes as two American girls of loose moral fiber get a flat tire.

“Run away!” Alfie yells at the screen.

_ “What the hell...”  _ Jing whispers horrified and dives behind Mitchell, using his shoulder and back to shield her from the abomination on the screen.

__

She can feel him laughing, the sound rumbles through his chest and the sound dances around the sound of the horrified screams of their classmates. A hand sets on her leg and she jumps, peaking through the space between Mitchell's arm and chest at her leg.

His hand has settled on her bare skin, just above her knee, his thumb is rubbing at the side of her leg, his fingers splayed across her leg, pressing softly into the thankfully smooth skin of her inner thigh.

Her stomach tightens and her body tenses, she pulls her legs closer together, he maybe trying to comfort her but it feels more like he's trying to cop a feel and he seems to be missing a few bases. Taking a deep breath she pulls herself out of the relative safety and sits up straight in her chair. She brushes off his hand and looks at him, their eyes meet briefly until the sound of a scream pulls both their attentions to the screen.

She feels sick. Honestly she thinks she might throw up. She clamps a hand over her mouth just in case, because her stomach is seriously considering running out of this 'movie'.

Mitchell hands her the empty bag of popcorn and it takes a long agonized moment filled with gore and blood to realize that he's given it to her as a sort of sick bag.

She's going to be fine

She's going to be fine

She's going to be-

_ “oh god-” _ she hisses and leans forward the popcorn bag to her mouth, her elbows on her knees and her breakfast in the bag.

__

The sound of her heaving goes mainly unnoticed under the sounds of the movie, Katie slides her bag out of the way and a hand is on her back, holding her braid away from her face, keeping it from swinging into the line of fire. She can tell without looking that it isn't Katie's its too large and hot. She rolls her shoulders and his hand 'slips' down her back, his hand is caught for a moment on the waistband of her skirt.

__

Her head turns violently towards him, eyes narrowed, skin hot, the taste of bile still on her tongue.

__

He removes his hand quickly, showing her his hands in a form of surrender before turning back to the movie, his body turned toward Rem Dogg as they both are totally engrossed in the disgusting debacle.

__

She sits up straight in her seat and watches with horrified wide eyes the rest of the movie, in the same way one can't take their eyes off a car crash. She misses the relative safety of Mitchell but she refuses to have the need for safety be confused with her very first romantic experience, and she refuses to have it take place in such a movie.

__

She will not associate him with a feeling of safety  _ and  _ the taste of bile.

__

She just won't.

__

The science field trip is nothing short of a fiasco, when the movie finally comes to a close, she discovers she wasn't the only one to vomit and that most of the people involved are shocked into a sort of horrified silence, including Alfie.

__

Alfie stands up in a worryingly robotic manner and starts to move toward the lobby and everyone starts to follow suit, she shoves the bag of vomit under her seat and follows Mitchell and Rem Dogg out into the lobby.

__

They all stand in the lobby in silence, well everyone who isn't Mitchell and Rem Dogg (who obviously used this as an opportunity to get into an 18 movie that their parents wouldn't let them see)

__

“Here.” Mitchell hands Jing a pack of gum. Rem Dogg looks between them and raises an eyebrow at Mitchell, she turns away with the gum, only half seeing the shoving match that's started beside her.

__

Silently she takes a piece and pops it into her mouth a burst of fruit flavour hits her and erases the taste of bile.

__

She wishes something could erase those images from her brain. She wants to wipe the whole thing from her mind like it never happened, as if the day just hadn't existed at all.

__

She turns around as they walk out of the theatre and Mitchell is smiling and laughing their joyous conversation is filling up the dead quiet air and it causes a tightening in her stomach that she's dead set on blaming on what she just saw and nothing else.

__

Mr. Wickers is going to be in so much trouble for this, by the looks on everyone’s faces even Joe might tell on him this time.


	2. PESTILENT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He'd given out more viruses than Chantelle and just because he sort of liked Jing did not mean that her computer was safe. I fact quite the opposite.

**Pestilent:** _informal, dated_ Causing annoyance; troublesome.

“You like her or something?” Rem Dogg asked eyes narrowed at the door to the library.

“Shut up.” he gives the usual non answer, “Just keep watch wheels.” He's sitting at Jing's desk and is currently searching through her bag.

He knows that he shouldn't be but he knows that her phone is in here somewhere and he has the best plan ever. He was going to install a virus in the phone and when she hooked it into her computer he would have access to all her files, giving him a not quite intimate knowledge of her life and if he was lucky she would come to him with a plea to help her.

Which he would probably do...well it depended on the day.

He shifts through her notebooks and pens and a well worn copy of _Fahrenheit 451_.

He pulls it fully out of the bag and flips through the yellowing pages. The bookmark is her student id card, her picture is just as bad as every other one he's seen.

“Mitchell...”Rem Dogg hisses from the door, “Stop reading her homework and get on with it.”

“I'm not.” Mitchell hissed but put the book back into the bag and continued his search for her phone. A quick sweep of another pocket produced tampons.

“Are those?” Rem Dogg leaned into the room trying to get a better look at the white sticks in his friends hand.

It wasn't the first time Mitchell had had the unfortunate luck to deal with these particular articles of femininity. He did have an older sister after all and a mother...there had been more than one occasion when he had been _asked_ to pick some up at the store on the way home.

These particular items however didn't bring to mind the erratic behaviour of his female family members

They brought home with an outstanding swiftness the reminder that Jing was very much a girl, with all the girl parts that he has been impatiently waiting to see without the help of his laptop.

“They're just tampons.” he tells him and puts the items back in their hiding place. Rem Dogg is red in the face, perhaps he's also being reminded of what is hiding under Jing's regulation length skirt, more than likely he's just never really seen one before, he doesn't have any sisters.

He tries another pocket and is rewarded for his dedication. His hand comes out of the small pocket with her cell phone.

“Finally.” Rem Dogg grumbles from the doorway.

He unlocks her phone with ease, seriously he's surprised he hasn't been recruited by the government already, he is just too damn good at this stuff. I mean her password was even in _Chinese_ for christ-sakes.

He runs through the list of her contacts out of curiosity mostly, he wants to know if she has his phone number. Chantell and Stephan are in there which he isn't surprised at, he finds the rest of Form K, including himself, and a couple names he doesn't recognize, mostly girls, her parents and _David_.

“Who the fuck is _David?_ ” he grumbles his fingers already starting up the delete sequence.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“Don't delete her contacts you twat, she'll know someone's been in there.” Rem Dogg throws a ball of paper at him which lands on the desk behind him.

He's right. He backs out of the delete contact screen and cracks into the o/s of the little machine and hides the virus. He replaces the contents of her bag and returns the bag to its home by her chair.

And they leave the scene unseen. Him riding on the back of Rem Doggs chair.

All he has to do is wait.

-

He doesn't have to wait long, he's at Rem Dogg's house when his laptop makes a beautiful little noise to tell him that it is currently downloading all of Jing's files.

“So it actually worked?” Rem Dogg sounds more than a little surprised. Which he thinks is a little unnecessary, it's not like his plans haven't worked in the past, he got them into Human Centipede after all, although taking advantage of Alfie wasn't difficult.

“Course it did.” He minimizes the screen they had been using to work on their History homework and he pulled open file after file of Jing's information, word documents, internet history, music files, messaging history, personal information, her email, calendars.

Rem Dog watched as Mitchell's fingers flashed across the keyboard transferring information over into a permanent home on his laptop, “So you like Jing.”

“What?”

“It's cool man...”

Mitchell turned away from the complete annihilation of Jing's computer, “it's cool?” he's waiting for a remark of some kind, Jing is lots of things but he has a hard time imagining Rem thinking that one of those things is _cool_.

Rem Dogg shrugs, “Sure I mean she's not awful to look at and she's...”

Mitchell turns in his seat, “and she's?”

“I don't know man it's Jing.” he shrugs at a loss and Mitchell can't really blame him. He's not sure why he likes her, he just does.

He turns back to the screen and the machine makes an unhappy noise. It's lost connection.

“How cute, she cut the connection.” he smirks and opens the word document housing their history assignment.

“cute? Doesn't that mean you can't get access to her files anymore?”

“Yeah, but i've already corrupted her files. Not many people even think about disconnecting.” He's impressed that she didn't run around the room in a panic or try to save her files. Just disconnected. He might like her a little more for that, even if it means he doesn't get to play around in her computer more.

“So now you just wait until she comes crying to you to fix her computer so you can be her knight in shining armour?”

“Simple as that.”

“What if she goes to someone else?”

“Who?”

-

Jing is standing in front of Alfie when he comes in, he slows down waiting to hear what's going on, waiting for the telltale Chinese insult.

“My computer was hacked, I don't have my homework.”

“hacked?” Alfie sits up a little bit.

“yes.”

“Is anyone fixing it?”

“My father is getting quotes.”

Alfie looks confused like he's not sure what that means, and Mitchell makes a displeased noise in the back of his throat, he hadn't even thought that her parents would try and get it fixed for her.

Alfie looks behind Jing to Mitchell and points, “you're good with computers. You fix Jing's computer.”

“What?” he's more than a little surprised and so is Jing.

“My father can-”

“How much will that cost?” Alfie asks in a surprisingly cohesive moment of concerned adult.

Mitchell shrugs, “what happened to it?”

Jing sighs not believing she has to even bother with this, “Something called a pestilent virus? No one my father's talked to has any idea what it is, it downloaded all my files somewhere and then corrupted everything. I think I disconnected before they got too much, but the whole thing is just blue screening now.”

Mitchell nods like he's heard about this before, “Oh yeah my sister got that a while back,” which is absolutely true, the fact that he gave it to her because she was being a cow aside, “I can fix it.”

“There. Mitchell will fix it.” Alfie sets his head back down on his desk.

“I couldn't ask you to do that.”

“I'll give you extra credit in something.” Alfie grumbles no longer looking.

“In English?” he asks because honestly he needs the extra credit in that.

Alfie just waves them away and Mitchell tries not to look smug.

-

They walk home together.

“Want some?” he offers her his cigarette and the look she gives him could wither flowers but she takes a quick look around and takes the offered fag. He watches her take a deep breath, momentarily fascinated by the movement of her mouth around the paper. She hands it back and he does his best to make the contact last a little longer than it should. She doesn't even seem to notice.

The entire walk to her house is silent, she seems to have nothing to say to him at all and he can't figure out for the life of him what to say.

It's a moderately sized house, bigger than his and he assumes less people live in it as well. She unlocks the door and lets him inside the house.

The whole place is empty.

“No one home?” he asks letting his book bag drop to the floor of the entryway, watching as she leans over to set her books on the bench.

“My father has a meeting and my mother is in surgery.”

“Anything serious?”

“Just a routine bypass.” she turns and must see that he looks concerned, “My mother is a doctor.”

“So where's the computer?” he asks his voice echoing ever so slightly in the large empty house.

“Upstairs.” she starts up the stairs, “you sure you can fix it?”

“Very.” he replies following her up the stairs and into a room that is very obviously her bedroom.

He's never really been in a girls bedroom before, his sister aside, and he thinks that maybe Jing's room is a bad room to start with. It's immaculate, he thinks her bed might even have hospital corners. She sets her textbooks beside the corrupted useless laptop and pulls out the chair, sitting behind it on the bed.

There is a tv on her dresser and an x-box beside that, Tokyo Sin sits atop it. There are bottles of perfume, delicately coloured little crystal things sitting in front of her mirror. The closet is open wide and he can clearly see that her clothes are organized by colour.

He runs his hand along the clothes and looks over at her, he has surprisingly no trouble at all picturing her in bright happy colours, in the soft silk dresses he has his hands on. She's sitting on the bed, her legs firmly closed, her arms crossed and impatience written all over her face, but her eyes are focused on the dress in his hand not on him and he wants to think that she's nervous about having him here. Nervous about being in an empty house with him.

“You'd look good in this.” he tells her, taking a deep breath and waiting for some sort of beratement.

“...can you fix the computer please, I have essays to work on.” she says looking away from him embarrassed.

“Sure.” he drops the dress and sits down in the offered chair.

He restores the computer in fifteen minutes, he could have restored it quicker than that but he thought it might look suspicious, fifteen minutes should be impressive but still innocent.

“Fixed.” he pushed himself away from the desk and slid across the floor into the bed, “I updated your firewall, it's the same one I have so you shouldn't have this problem again.”

He's close to her now and he puts his hand on the bed next to her thigh, her leg squirms but doesn't move away from his hand.

“Thank...” she looks at him and must realize how close they are because her words die in her throat and her body moves ever so slightly into him.

Mitchell thanks god for his talent with computers and leans in closer to her, he can smell her skin, sweet and a lingering cigarette smoke to it, the heat of her skin washed over him and he reaches out his other hand to her neck, she flinches a little but one of her hands moves towards him, holds on loosely to his hoodie. God this is going to happen, this is going to go down in history as the best plan ever. He can see her wet her lips and everything in his body tightens. His heart thumping wildly against his ribs.

He doesn't hear the door until it's too late. His mouth is almost on hers, so close he can almost taste her, her hand is pulling him closer, everything is going better than he could have ever hoped.

“Jing I'm home. Do you have a friend over?”

Jing's eyes snap open, her hand pushes him away rather than pulls and the wheels of the chair do the rest. He makes a mental note not to linger so long next time, and wheelie chairs are out.

He watches her leave the room and half listens to a conversation in Chinese that he doesn't understand. Moments later her father appears in the doorway next to Jing. He extends a hand and he gets out of the chair to shake the older man's hand.

“Jing tells me that you have fixed the computer, is this true?”

“Yes, sir. My sister had the same thing happen to her laptop a little while back. It was basically the same fix.”

He claps him on the back and leads him out of the room and before he really knows what's happening he's being handed his back and the door closes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next: Variform


	3. Variform

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her body language was louder than her words no matter what language she was using

Variform: (of a group of things) differing from one another in form. 

There was something different about Mitchell.

And it wasn't just that she found herself looking at him more, watching the way his mouth moved or mesmerized by the space he kept between him and everyone else.

It was something else entirely.

When she spoke in her mother tongue Mitchell would look at her like it meant something, a look of concentration and understanding on his face.

She had heard him try and stifle laughter when she was being exceptionally brutal to Alfie.

She had to know if he actually understood her.

He was lagging behind on the way to gym class and she slowed her pace to match his. As he went to grab the door of the locker room she grabbed hold of his arm. Everything in him seemed to come to a sudden stop. She pulled him to face her. She was going to do this, she was going to have answers and if she's firm and maybe even a little forceful she could get a straight forward answer and be on her way to change before Chantelle noticed she wasn't there.

His body was close to hers, too close, and it was all heat and smell and the memory of the almost kiss flashing across her body and she faltered, “Wh-what do you think your doing?”

She tried to get big, to lord the small height differential over him but all he did was smirk, “What are you talking about?”

She switched to mandarin, _“you know very well what I'm talking about.”_ she narrows her eyes at him but he's so close it's distracting, the heat is just rolling off him, the smell of cigarette smoke and energy drinks, and she wants to touch him, hold onto him. Her hand reaches out for him for a moment before she drops it remembering what this is about, _“I know you can understand me.”_ she hisses.

She just doesn't understand, why would he hide learning another language, especially hers, from her. She could help him. She'd love to help him, to speak in her mother tongue to someone who wasn't going to slap her upside the head for words of a less upstanding breed. She imagines speaking with him and is suddenly all too aware that she may have been staring at his mouth.

He shook his head faining incomprehension, but a smirk was spreading across his face his tongue darting out over his lips. Surely he had noticed.

He looked down and she followed his gaze.

She was still holding onto him, her fingers tight around his wrist, the skin hot on hers in an infuriating body chemistry way she doesn't want to acknowledge. She drops his hand like he's on fire, _“fine then.”_ she steps back away from him but his hand shoots out and his fingers lock around her wrist.

For a brief moment she remembers the feel of his hand against her neck, soft, gentle almost as he leaned into her. The heat of his hand next to her leg.

She looked down at the space between them, there was barely any, if he pulled her in any closer, her hips would smash into his, leaving nothing to the imagination. She tried to turn herself away from him but was only successful for a few fleeting moments before her body language opened back up to him.

She's more than a little aware of the effect his closeness is having on her, she starts to swear in mandarin. The foul language just falls from her mouth.

“Fuck you have a filthy mouth.” His mouth twists with the enjoyment of it, and the suggestive nature of the tone is more than she can handle on a Tuesday morning, possibly ever actually because some of the words were far more dominate as he looked into her and they sped up her heat, beating erratically against her chest.

A triumphant smile breaks across her face when she realizes what his words mean rather than what he wants them to mean. She switches back to English, “I knew you understood me. Why are you hiding it?”

“I'm not,” he lets go of her wrist and steps back into the door, “I can't.”

He's embarrassed, there is a flush to his face and his hand goes for the door handle.

“You can.” she tells him because obviously he can.

“I can't speak it yet okay.” he tells her frustrated and embarrassed, he looks away from her, “my accent's really bad.” His face has gotten red and she can't help it, she laughs.

Of all the ridiculous things, he's ashamed of his accent.

“Shut up Jing.” he pushes out at her but it's soft and if it means anything at all it means come closer. Her body answers by stepping into him, there's no space between them now and her body is freaking out but there’s a strange joy she gets in the flush of his cheeks and the hitch in his breathing.

It feels like her body is trying to reach out to him, like she's using everything in her to communicate with him, a variform of language spoken and unspoken and the wordless language seems to be getting its point across far better than her mouth can. If the point is that she wants him to kiss her, to hold on to her.

“Why did you...”

“I wanted to know what you were saying to Wickers.” he responses and she only half hears it her senses filled with the sound of his breath and the movement of his chest against hers.

“Wait what?” she steps back from him and the sudden loss in body heat is almost enough to make her shiver, “what I say to...”

Mitchell shrugs, standing straighter, leaning away from the door, trying to regain some control over the situation, “I like it when you're mean to him.” The smirk is back but the flush is still in his face.

“Rem Dogg is mean to him, and you wouldn't have to learn another language...” the words come out quiet.

“I like when _you_ do it.” he emphasizes, his eyes focused on hers as if he's trying to tell her something important.

“Hey what are you two still doing in the hall?” Alfie's voice bursts across the hall and Jing steps further away.

Alfie looks between them, “is something going on here?” he points between them, noticing the flushed skin and enormous amount of space there is between them now.

“Nothing.” Jing tells him quickly before almost running into the girls locker room.

She rests against the door and can hear Mitchell shouting at Alfie in what really is terribly accented Mandarin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: Zealous


	4. Zealous

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jing and Mitchell have a very brief conversation about The Manchurian Candidate

She normally eats lunch with Stephan and Chantelle. Which suits him fine because something about them is so unapproachable that he never has to worry about some block trying to get Jing's attentions.

Plus it means he gets to fuck around with Rem Dogg and make disgusting comments and talk footie.

The lunch situation serves him great.

“Whose that?” Rem Dogg asks pointing behind him and he knows what direction that is and whose sitting behind him.

Jing

“Christ what is it now?” he grumbles and stuffs the rest of his sandwich into his mouth in turns.

He almost spits it back out.

“Who the _fuck_ is that?” he asks around the bread. He narrows his eyes and can hear Remmy laughing behind him. God he can't wait until he's trying to get a girl, he is going to laugh so hard as payback.

Sitting down at the table beside Jing, is a vaguely familiar boy. Tall, dark hair, looks like a total wanker and is smiling like a goon. Worst of it thou is that Jing actually seems pleased to have him invade her space.

“Maybe he's her boyfriend.” Rem Dogg supplies.

He swallows the large bit of sandwich and almost chokes.

“She doesn't have one.” He tells him and he's eighty percent sure it's true. Sure she's been a little shy since he almost confessed to liking her in the hall, but she had been the one to start it, she'd been all over him.

“Maybe she does today.”

Mitchell shakes his head and turns back to him, “no way, never.”

“Never?”

“She likes me.” Mitchell's voice is a little too firm and he's aware that it sounds more like he's trying to convince himself, “why would she date anyone else?” he can practically feel her skin under his fingers, can smell her, can feel her breath on his neck. No she definitely likes him.

“Because they asked?”

Jing's laughter bubbles up behind him and his stomach twists in on itself. Chantelle and Stephan are also laughing at whatever that no body said, but their laughter doesn't feel like a blade against his skin.

Rem Dogg steals some of his crisps and he doesn't even move to stop him.

“Did you ever even ask 'er?” Rem asks but he knows the answer already. He knows he hasn't he's been so focused on making sure she actually liked him back, on touching her skin, on elaborate plans to spend time with her, too focused on getting their mouths to actually _fucking_ touch that he hasn't asked at all. Honestly he's not even sure he knows what he'd do with her if they were dating. Well he knows what he wants to do but that's not really _dating_.

All he knows about relationships he's learned from tv and his parents, and he doesn't live with Jing so it's not a matter of remembering to put the toilet seat down and not putting dishes in the sink, and he doesn't have storm related superpowers to read her mind with.

He's been so focused on the after stuff that he completely missed the fact that she might actually want to date, that she'd want to go see movies (not horror) and have him buy her dinner.

He's been too zealous and it appears he's been it in the entirely wrong places because this twat has snuck in under the radar.

“Oh god...” he trails off turning back to the boy with _his_ girl smiling all awkwardly trying to be all disarming and shit, “It's _David.”_

“That wanker we kicked out of the election?” Rem leans over to get a better view of the boy he helped destroy (okay he didn't really do anything other than challenge Mitchell and watch him show off but still).

“He's the tosser in her phone.” it feels like a balloon in his chest has been popped. He feels Wickers level of pathetic and it must just hang off him because Rem Dogg does something that he never does.

“Whatever, you're totally better than that twat.”

A compliment, a vote of confidence. He feels like he's going to be sick, nothing about his and Rem's relationship is openly supportive and this hand out compliment if nothing else proves just how pathetic he must look.

“I need a smoke.” He pushes himself away from the table and very pleased with himself for not even looking at Jing as he goes past.

The cigarette smoke fills his lungs but doesn't push out the feelings, it doesn't push out the anger, or sadness or stress It doesn't fill him with calm it just fills his veins with nicotine and poison and gives him something to do with his hands.

He tries to focus on the cool air against his skin, the rough brick at his back, the feel of the rolled paper in his hand. Tries to think of anything that's not the wasted time he's spent trolling through her files like a pervert for some clue, wasted time on learning a language he's never going to use.

“Pickwell's going to catch you.” Jing's voice slashes through his fog of self pity. He turns to her and she's leaning against the brick, the books she'll need for the class after lunch held securely to her chest like some kind of shield.

“What are you doing out here?” he asks offering her the cigarette, “shouldn't you be inside with the Manchurian candidate?”

She takes a quick look around,presumably for Pickwell, and takes the offered cigarette, her fingers slide along his in what he really wants to be a meaningful touch. He watches as she brings the smoking paper to her mouth and he remembers the wheelie chair and the long lingering looks. He surges forward and knocks the smouldering stick from her hand.

He pulls her against him and finally kisses her.

He knows he shouldn't, he knows that this is Jing and she's not like other girls, that she deserves to go slow or at the very least in a linear fashion and he knows he is all over the place but Remmy is wrong. He isn't better than that twat _David_ , in fact he is all too aware that Jing and David even sort of suit each other, that he'd be the kind of boy to buy her flowers and candy and fumble with sweet words. Which isn't like him at all, he's all mouth, and he's using it right now because this will probably be his only chance to kiss her and if he doesn't kiss her at least once he'll just die.

But _fuck_ she is kissing him back.

Her hands on him and her books fall to the ground between their legs and he can feel her fingers press into his side and at the base of his neck. If she's never done this before (which has always been his impression) she's either a natural or he likes her so much it doesn't matter one way or the other. It's all hot breath and bruising lips and teeth. His hand on her back pushing her into him, at the small of her back edging ever so slightly up into her shirt, onto her skin.

It feels like his heart is going to explode it's going too fast and his lungs are burning and Jing's hands are balling into fists. Being able to hold his breath for four minutes isn't worth a thing if she can't.

He pulls back just enough to allow air back into their lungs and her eyes snap open and her body is heaving for air and it's pushing into him and Christ he could do this forever if she'd let him.

“book or movie?” she asks and her voice is heaven, it's all heaving breathlessness.

“Wot?” his brain can barely get around the fact that she was kissing him back with rather a lot of enthusiasm. If he hadn't thought she was perfect before the way she had kissed him would have convinced him.

“book or movie?” she tries again her voice a little steadier and her chest no longer rapidly pushing into him to get at the oxygen.

“The Manchurian Candidate?” she nods and her mouth is getting closer to his again and her fingers are pushing into him, pulling him closer, “the movie with that murder mystery granny.” He wishes it had been the book, but honestly he hadn't even known it was a book at all.

She makes a sound in her throat and her mouth is on his again.

“Get a bloody room.” Grayson's cigarette's and gravel voice tries to push through the cloud of hot breath and skin and wet pressure. He thinks he manages to through him an obscene hand gesture behind Jing's back but he can't be sure.

He wants to remember everything about this, the pressure of her hands, mouth, chest. The taste of her (apple juice and something that's just her), the smell of her (mostly cigarette's and fabric softener and something vaguely flowery), the feel of her teeth on his lips, the feel of her burning soft skin. The soft little sounds she makes in her throat in spite of herself.

“Oi, you two!” A vaguely authoritative voice manages to break through the haze of hormones, “Break it up....Mitchell?”

Christ it's Wickers...again.

Jing detaches herself from Mitchell and the loss of her touch is devastating.

“Jing?” Wickers sounds flabbergasted.

Mitchell reaches out for her but she darts back into the school leaving all her books behind.

“You spooked her.” Mitchell hisses at Alfie dropping down to pick up Jing's books, “again.” he grumbles, seriously cock blocked _again._

Alfie just stands there and watches him pick up Jing's books, “Are you and Jing....” Mitchell looks over at him all narrow eyes and bruised lips and watches as Alfie puts a hand to his head like it just doesn't make any sense, like his head will explode.

Mitchell stands up, Jing's books in his arms and just walks away, leaving Alfie to flounder around, no doubt trying to bleach the image out of his head.

When he got to the classroom Jing is sitting at her desk, looking at the empty desk staring at the graffiti free top as if, if she tries hard enough it will bend to her will. He sets her books on the desk and she looks up at him all flushed skin and red swollen lips.

“Thank you.” she says looking quickly away, pulling the textbooks to her like armour.

“Anytime.” he tells her and it's impossible to keep the self satisfaction out of his voice. The word sounds almost dirty in his mouth and he has no problem with that because that's the way he means it.

He moves to his desk and flops into it, his feet up on the desk like he owns the place. He leans back into Remmy's desk the smile on his face a little more devious than it should be.

“Did you just?” Rem Dogg asks narrowing his eyes at the telltale red of his friends mouth.

“Told you she liked me.”

“So you asked her out then?”

“No...” He pulls his feet off the desk and the chair snaps upright as Alfie walks in. He didn't ask her, although to be fair he said maybe twenty words and almost all of them were about a movie his mom made him watch. He looks at her and see's that she's looking at him, her skin is flushed and her mouth is red, seeing that she's caught she turns quickly back to her notes. Surely he doesn't need to ask her. Obviously it's just a thing that _is_ now. Hell he can still feel her teeth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To the one person who seems to be reading this. I love you.
> 
> NEXT: Culpable


	5. Culpable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Culpable - deserving of blame.  
> example: Jing

He hasn't asked her out.

It's been a week and nothing.

Was she awful? Did he not care anymore? Had he kissed her and made up his mind that he was done? That she hadn't been worth the effort (whatever effort was made she isn't sure).

Jing bit the inside of her mouth. These thoughts were getting out of hand, spiralling and she refused to do it. She refused to be _that_ girl. The girl foolishly waiting at home by the phone. The girl that couldn't stop thinking about him, about his hands and his mouth and the sound of his voice. No she wouldn't be that girl. She was better than that. Smarter. Too smart for this.

She had given him plenty of opportunities to talk to her, he just hadn't taken them. She was starting to feel more and more the fool. This was her fault for falling for a wide boy.

Not that she had fallen or anything. That was something girls like Chantelle did. Fall madly and illogically into love. Don't get her wrong, she loves Chantelle and that might be one of the reasons actually. The girl loves so easily and so completely. It just isn't her.

“So has he asked you yet?” Chantelle's voice comes crashing though her thoughts.

Good god not only does she know about Mitchell she knows that he hasn't asked her out. So much for keeping her affairs out of the Form K limelight.

“No.” she tries to sound like she doesn't care but the word is broken in her mouth. She pushes her glasses up and wonders how pitiful she must look because Chantelle's mouth pushes into a pout.

“He will by the end of the day.” She declares and the way she says it is so vague that she's not sure if she's issuing the world a challenge or if she knows something.

Stephan turns in his seat, “Whose going to what by the end of the day?”

Jing opens her mouth but Chantelle is quicker on the draw, “David still hasn't asked her out.”

She is very glad she didn't say anything.

“That cutie who keeps having lunch with us?” Stephan asks and she notices that he's not actually looking at either of them, she follows his eye line and he's looking at Mitchell.

He knows.

“Of course, who else?” She says it like the topics closed because of course it's David. She has no reason to think it's anyone else.

“Who else indeed.” Stephan's voice is a little too much sass and his head has a little too much wobble.

Thankfully Wickers clears his throat and her attention is on him, solely focused on trying to ensnare their manchild of a teacher.

Stephan however clicks his tongue before turning back to the front of the classroom.

-

She should feel bad, in fact she kind of does, just a little bit, a small almost gnawing feeling.

She should tell Chantelle.

But every time she tries, every time the words _I snogged Mitchell_ come rushing to the front of her mouth she just looks so pleased, so happy for her that they won't come out.

“David is a good catch.” she tells her as she brushes out her hair.

Chantelle had declared a fashion emergency and pulled her out of the room, right in the middle of Wickers' explanation of the suez canal (he had used the term sphincter more than once).

“He's really nice.” she agrees. She's not sure why she's letting Chantelle play dress up with her. Maybe just to get away from Wickers.

She likes David, she really does, she enjoys his company and there's something comforting about his presence. It's like being assured that she's not the only smart kid in the place, not the only one who cares about learning. He's probably the only person in the place she's been able to have a good sized intellectual conversation with and the idea of going out with him is pleasing.

She just can't picture Mitchell taking her out, can't see him coming over to her house to pick her up and take her out, to see a movie maybe have dinner, he just won't fit into the idea no matter how much she tries to push him. David however fits perfectly into the idea, in a polo and slacks even.

“Smart.” Chantelle offers, “and the way he talks about you is so sweet.”

“He talks about me?” Her heart stumbles around at the idea of a boy talking about her, she can feel her skin get hot, “what kind of things?”

“Oh you know,”Chantelle trails off and the look on her softens, “you don't know.” The way Chantelle pushes the hair back from her eyes reminds her of what her mother does when she's sick it's all super soft and caring and it strikes at something in her.

_I snogged Mitchell_ the words want to burst out of her. She pulls her lips into her mouth to keep the words inside.

“He talks about how smart you are, and how kind and straight forward you are. No games with you.” she shrugs like she doesn't really understand why that last thing is worth mentioning. It strikes her funny that David thinks there's no games with her when she seems to constantly be in one with Mitchell, “He's sweet on you.”

He says such nice things about her, it seems that he only see's the good in her when all Mitchell seems to see is the bad, the most he's said about her is that she's mean, cruel even.

And yet...

He shouldn't think any of those things about her, sure she's smart but she never uses her brains for good, they are always twisted into some evil end (she blames Alfie), and she certainly isn't kind or straight forward either. In fact she feels kind of awful.

“I'm a bad person.” she confides in the near empty girls room.

“Is this about sabotaging his presidential race?”

Oh god, how had she forgotten that? It was her fault. She's such a terrible person. She doesn't deserve David.

“I don't deserve David.” she whimpers.

She's going to be sick.

She's sickening herself.

New low.

She's listened to him talk about politics both country wide and school wide, he's passionate about it and she made it so he didn't even get to run, stripped him of his right to even throw in his hat in.

“You do too.” Chantelle tries to reassure her, voice firm and with a heavy hand she clips back Jing's hair, “Now come on I want Stephan to see what beautiful hair your hiding in that stupid braid everyday.”

As easily as Chantelle pulled her out of the classroom she pulls her out of the bathroom and basically pushes her back into the classroom.

The classroom is silent.

She's not going to look at him.

She isn't.

She's better than that...

She looks at him.

He looks confused more than anything and she'd be lying to say she wasn't disappointed.

“Oh my god girl,” Stephan rushes up and he's got his hands in her hair and he and Chantelle fawn over how soft and wavy her hair is until the bell rings for lunch.

Stephan and Jing sit down at the usual table and she can feel the heat of Mitchell looking at her. She's not sure how she knows it's him, maybe it's a teenage girl superpower, maybe it's just vanity.

“So you and Mitchell huh?” He asks and his eyebrows waggle dramaticly.

Jing's heart stops, she looks quickly around, no one seems to have heard him, “How did you...”

“Grayson told me.”

“Grayson?” She vaguely recalls the sound of the older boys voice when she had been trying rather wantonly to make Mitchell apart of herself.

“Yeah we play footie some nights.” He shrugs like it isn't a big deal.

“Footie of foostie?” She asks and she's surprised the words came out at all.

“He says one I say the other. Not the point girl. What's going on with you and Mitchell?” He asks pointing behind her as causally as his dramatic blood will allow.

She pushes some hair out of her face, cursing Chantelle for taking away the strict order of her braid. She looks behind her to Mitchell who is deep in conversation with Rem Dogg about something or other, he doesn't even look at her. Obviously he's done with her, obviously he found something lacking in her. It's just not fair that he can turn it off like that, whatever _it_ is.

“Nothing I guess.” she turns back to him and he's looking at her like he knows exactly what's going on.

“You sound disappointed.”

She pushes back the big curtain of hair and finds her fingers twisting in it, this is why she keeps it locked away behind her, she can't stop twisting it in her fingers like some tart.

“What about David?”

She pulls her fingers out of her hair and pushes up her glasses, “I like David, I do, a lot...it's just...” She doesn't know how to say it, she's not even sure what exactly it is she can't say. She likes David, they have a lot in common and agree on a lot of topics. She can see herself going out with him, going to dances and movies and everything she just can't... she can't picture kissing him. It's an image that just won't materialize. Whereas kissing Mitchell replays in her head on an infinite loop mucking up other very important processes like breathing.

“Did you hear that they are having a midnight showing of _Evil Dead 2_?” David asked them sitting down next to her.

“Oh? Frank likes that.” Stephan said quietly.

“Whose Frank?” David asks pushing a salad around his plate.

“....” She watches him look across the room at where Grayson is hassling Alfie.

“It's his cousin.” She offers and David just nods and focuses on his plate. His checks are flushes and his eyes keep darting over at her.

“Your hair...” he almost whispers, the words pulled out in confusion and possibly awe. He reaches a hand out and rubs the strands between his fingers.

“Oh yeah.” She tries to pull it away from him embarrassed. It feels like such a vain attempt to get attention. Just because her hair is different doesn't mean that she's different, “Chantelle did it.”

“I sure did and it looks fab.” Chantelle tells them sitting down next to Stephan, looping an arm around his, “isn't it David.”

“Uh...” David looks away from her, “yeah, you look good like that.” he tells her and his voice is all soft and nervous and sweet that it warms up her skin. He clears his throat and turns to look at her, “Jing?”

“yes?”

He takes her hand in his and his skin is damp and hot like he's nervous and his eyes focused on her, it seems almost like he's trying to drown out the rest of the room.

“Would you do me the honour of going on a date with me this saturday?”

Something drops behind her, clatters and rings out behind her back.

“David I'd-” She doesn't get to finish her response because David is suddenly on the ground. His hands covering his now bleeding mouth.

She turns to see that Mitchell is now standing next to her, holding onto his bloody hand, behind him a chair is overturned.

“Mitchell!” She stands quickly from her seat and pushes him out of the way. She falls to her knees at David's side, “oh my god are you all right?” She asks trying to pull his hands away from his mouth.

“His head was harder than I thought it'd be but I'm fine.” Mitchell tells her flexing his fingers.

She turns on him sharply, “No you, you...” She's seething. What business does he have to punch David, so a nice boy wants to take her out on a date that's none of his damn business, she slips into mandarin _“ you selfish, stupid bastard.”_

“Jing?” David pushes himself up so he's sitting on the floor.

“Oh David are you alright?”

He wipes some blood from his mouth, it stains the cuff of his shirt, “I think so...” He turns to Mitchell his eyes wide and hurt and confused, “Why did you...” But Mitchell isn't looking back at him, he's looking at her.

“ _Bastard's a little rough_ Jing.” Mitchell responds to her comment. His tongue stumbling a little at the words but all in all she's rather impressed with how quickly he seems to be catching on.

The room falls into an almost silence, a buzz of quiet questions, why the hell does Mitchell Harper of all people know how to speak chinese?

“Well you deserve it.” She tells him heatedly helping David to his feet, “What did David ever do to you?”

“You're kidding right?” Mitchell's arms move almost like he's going to throw a punch at David again and the tall boy next to her flinches.

“Is this because he asked me on a date?” she asks her voice almost a hiss of noise. How dare he! How dare he attack David when all he had done was like her enough to ask her on a date, lord knows it's more than he's ever done.

Mitchell doesn't answer with his mouth but the movement of his body is a resounding _of course it is._

“Why would you want to go on a date with this tosser anyway?”

“hey-”David tries to interject, to defend himself and his feelings but Jing is too angry.

“Why? Because he's a nice, smart boy who likes me that's why.” She narrows her eyes at him and hopes that he feels some sort of pain at it, _“Because he asked me.”_ She tells him in confidence.

“I'm smarter than that twat!” Mitchell points at David and the room kind of snickers because David is one of the smartest kids in the entire school and Mitchell is just a Special K wide boy.

“Oh really?” She challenges.

“He couldn't have gotten you that data for the election.” he declares and the room gets oddly quiet save for Alfie who is now trying to make his way across the room to silence Mitchell.

“What data for the election?” David asks, turning on her.

“It's nothing.” She looks at Mitchell, _“shut up you idiot.”_

“ _I'm not stupid Jing, an idiot couldn't have learned a language this fast.”_ Mitchell decides to answer for her, “The data she used to get you out of the running for president.”

“Jing....” David looks absolutely crushed and it's heartbreaking, “Is this true?”

She hangs her head. Of course it's true. It's all her fault that Edmund was chosen instead of him, she provided all the information, gave Alfie all the variables and when he had asked for a way to destroy David Milbanks she had known exactly what to do. She was entirely culpable for his failure to be class representative for the election. It was completely her fault that his brother the incompetent _rain man_ of Abbey Grove took his place. And now he knew everything.

“It's true.” she whispers and the words break a little in her mouth, “I'm sorry David.”

“I'm not sure what to say...”

He might not know what to say but Mitchell isn't done yet, “You're going to go out with the _Manchurian Candidate_ after what happened monday?” He's talking about the kiss. She feels a little bad calling it a kiss when it had felt like a lot more than that but he hadn't done anything since then. Hell he had barely spoken to her at all.

David closed his eyes, “What happened monday?” he obviously doesn't want to know, he obviously thinks it's something way worse than it is.

“It was just a kiss, that was it.” She tells him and Chantelle makes a very inappropriate cat call.

“More like they were tryin to make a kid!” Grayson yells from the otherside of the room because of course he has to make everything worse.

“Just a-” Mitchell sputters, _“What are you talking about just a kiss!”_

“I'm going to go.” David tells her quietly, he can't even look at her. She's broken him.

“David I'm sorr-”

“don't.” he tells her his hand up to silence her. She's not sure what's upset him more, the fact that she sabotaged his chance at the election or the fact that apparently very recently she had had her mouth on another boy. Either way the feeling of betrayal just hangs on him.

David picks up his bag and walks away, she hopes to see the nurse.

“Good, now that he's gone-” Mitchell starts but Jing actually steps forward and shoves him.

“ _How could you do that!”_ She's speaking so fast she has no idea if he can understand or not, _“You have to ruin everything! You don't want me for your girlfriend so no one else can? You kiss me like you want to make something of it and then ignore me! Well you can't do that. You're done with me? I'm done with you. He was nice and he liked me and I liked him.”_ she can see that she's speaking too fast for him because he has a confused look on his face, he looks like he's desperately trying to sort through all the words he knows to figure out what she's saying.

She sighs and takes the elastic she was hiding in her pocket and starts to braid her hair, _“It's my turn to ignore you.”_ She tells him nice and slow.

“Jing...” Mitchell reaches out for her but she easily slips out of his grip. She feel like absolute shit and she is going to hide out in the refuge of every teenage girl nation wide. The girls room. She's going to sit in that stupid room and wait for this day to be over. She can hear the lunch room erupt into chaos as she leaves.

“Jing damn it!” She can hear Mitchell's voice ring out after her but she doesn't turn around, she won't.

And for the first time in a week when she says she won't turn around she really means it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT: Historionic


	6. Histrionical

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> histironic: excessively theatrical or dramatic in character or style.  
> example: a grand romantic gesture.

He calls her all Friday night waiting for her to answer, waiting for the ring to stop and finally roll into her voice instead of the canned voice mail message.

He must leave a hundred messages, all variants of _I'm sorry, I thought we were together, please call me back_

On the hundredth and seventeenth call it clicks over and instead of the standard _This is Jing Chow, please leave a message_ he can hear background noise.

“Jing!” He sits up quickly, he's been on the floor beside his bed for hours just waiting for a misery induced death to take him, “Jing, I'm soo sor-”

“Save it twat.” Chantelles voice ring over the line, sharp and harsh and it pushes him back onto the hard cold floor.

“Get off the line Chantelle.”

“No. She doesn't want to talk to you.”

“Don't decide for her.” He listens hard to the background of the call for Jing but all he can make out is Stephan gushing over something he found in Jing's closet.

_Oh my god, Jing, why don't you where this?_

“Bloody hell that's gorgeous.” There's an awe to Chantelle's voice that is infuriating.

_It's a brides maids dress_ Jing's voice comes loudly across the phone and his heart leaps into his throat and he feels absolutely pathetic.

“Why don't you go play dress up with Stephan and give Jing back her phone?”

She makes an annoyed sound in her throat that vibrates across the line, “She doesn't want to talk to you.” She tells him again, less angry but more firmly like she's trying to make a child understand why he can't have someone else's toy.

“I just want to apologize.”

“Well maybe you should apologize to David.”

He sighs this might actually be worse than waiting for it to click over into voice mail. Normally he has no problem with Chantelle but this is fucking agony, “Is that what she wants.” he asks defeated. God he's happy that his mates can't hear this, he'd never live it down. He's have to actually get in a real fight, one where both parties knew about it. (he wasn't any good at those ones)

Chantelle must have her hand against the mouth piece because the next part comes across muffled, “What do you want him to do?”

There's a muffled response and he's not sure if it's Stephan or Jing.

“Really? We can probably gt him to wear a dress to school monday...”

More incomprehensible speaking.

Chantelle sighs and removes her hand, “don't call again.” She tells him and her voice is firm but disappointed and she hangs up before he can say anything.

He sits there with the phone to his ear until the disengaged noise is just too much for him. He drops the phone and a string of angry vulgar mandarin flows out of his mouth.

“Oy!” His mother's voice rips up the stairs and he realizes for the first time that the door isn't closed all the way, “language!”

“I wasn't!” He yells back.

“Just because I don't know what your saying doesn't mean I don't know what you _mean_ young man.”

“Oh mum let him be.” his sister's voice joins the conversation. Oh god, she's coming to his aid that can not be good, “his girlfriend broke up with his sorry arse.”

“No, it's _way_ better than that.” another voice chimes in and fuck it's his brother.

Oh god no.

“Turns out he thought they were dating and just never told her.” He's laughing and he's not surprised, “Ain't that true Mitchy!” He yells up the stairs and he can hear his sister laughing underneath it.

Mitchell jumps up and goes to the door, “eat a dick!” He yells down and slams the door closed.

“Mitchell!” His mother yells up her voice angry with that mother's brand of disappointed and shocked.

He can hear someone come thumping up the stairs and he had a bad feeling it's his brother. He slides the dresser in front of the door and sits heavily against it.

Of course all this had to happen when his sister and brother were home.

His phone lights up and vibrates angrily across the hardwood.

He picks it up, it's a message from Stephan, a picture.

He hesitates before opening it, last time he opened a picture from Stephan it was of some blokes junk.

It's a picture of someone's note book, it's all lines of text and margins.

“Holy shit.” he whispers zooming into the paper. There, in the margin, in Jing's crisp deliberate handwriting;

_Mrs. Jing Harper_

_Dr. J. Harper_

_Dr. J. Chow-Harper_

_Mrs. Jing Harper-Chow_

The phone vibrates in his hand, Stephan again.

_This is adorable. Go to the midnight showing of Evil Dead 2_

Bleeding hell, Stephan is on his side. That beautiful melodramatic queen was on his side. He's surprised because usually Chantelle and Stephan are a package deal. But he isn't complaining.

“You have to come out sometime!” His brother's voice booms from the hall and the door moves with the force of his hands. He just shakes his head, really he should know better, this used to be his room.

Mitchell grabs his coat and opens the window, grabbing easily onto the tree limb and climbing down the trunk.

He jumps down from the trunk and he can feel the peacoat billow out behind him, he walks away with a smirk on his face feeling if only momentarily like an action hero.

He'd love to stick around for his brother to figure out how to get into the room and wail on him but he has better things to do, like watch a zombie movie and win back a girl.

-

“You a poof now?” Rem Dogg asks and he's not sure if it's a serious question or not. He and Rem Dogg are in his backyard just waiting out the day, “just cuz Jing isn't talking to you doesn't mean I'm going to be your rebound.” He's got his arms crossed and his eyes narrowed and he's not sure if he can handle a conversation with Rem Dogg about his sexual orientation not after all the fake medicine he'd tried to give him for _yellow fever_.

“Do you not want to go?”

“I didn't say i wouldn't go.” He leans back in the chair and cracks open another can of coke, “I'm not putting out.” He adds and Mitchell chokes a little on his drink, “buy me popcorn tonight.”

“What?”

“The big bucket.”

Mitchell sighs and flops forward in his seat, “You're going to make yourself sick.”

_

“So do you have some sort of stupid elaborate plan to try and win your 'girlfriend' back?”

He didn't appreciate the air quotes. He just hadn't thought that actually saying _hey Jing lets date_ was necessary and he was sure he'd never hear the end of it.

“I thought I'd just apologise.” He shrugs and Remmy shakes his head like he knows everything is going to go to shit, “it will work.”

“Why?”

“Cause she loves me.”

“Bullocks.”

“No, it's true.” He steps in Rem Dogg's path and takes out his phone, “look.” He shows Remmy the picture and Rem snatches it out of his grip.

“You called her how many times?” Remmy's voice is a mix of laughter and disbelief, “you pussy.”

He throws his fist into Rem Dogg's arm and takes the phone from him, “You can buy your own damn popcorn.” he grumbles and Rem Dogg laughs.

“That's not how this works, I want the big bucket of popcorn or everyone's going to know what a pussy you are.”

Sometimes he wishes that his relationship with Rem Dogg was just a tad more supportive.

“I hope you get sick.”

“No way. Stomach like a....a....what the fuck is that?” Rem Dogg points down the street.

“What,” he follows Rem Dogg's wide eyed gaze, “the fuck _is_ that?!”

He knows what it is, he just doesn't know _why_ it is.

Grayson and Stephan are leaning against the wall of the theatre. Very close to each other and seem to even be having a civil if not friendly conversation.

He's positive he's never seen Grayson smile like that before, without contempt or cruelty.

“Are they....” Rem Dogg can't even finish the question and honestly he doesn't think he'd be able to either because for a moment Stephan moves slightly and it is obvious that they are holding hands!

“Did you know that Grayson?”

Rem Dogg shakes his head, “should we...I don't know....not look or something?”

“It's like a car wreck...”

“I can't not look...”

“....”

“....”

“But he's _such_ a prick.” Mitchell finally says after a far too long moment of just staring at them.

“Total prick.” Rem agrees

He takes a deep breath, “you ready to bolt?” He asks and Rem Dogg readies himself to gt the hell out of there, “Oy Stephan!” Mitchell yells out waving to grab his attention like they just saw him.

It's not even slightly inconspicuous the way that Grayson is suddenly several feet away from Stephan. It's like homophobic magic.

“Hey!” Stephan waves back and it's just as flamboyant as always, like he hadn't just been fraternizing with the enemy, “quick!” He tells them and they move quickly to his side, but both his and Rem Dogg's eyes are glued to Grayson who actually looks embarrassed. He hadn't realised that was one of the emotions Grayson even had.

“Okay, I convinced Chantelle to bring Jing to the movie, don't ask how.”

“I wasn't...”

“Lets just say I had to let her in on some _very_ private information.”

“What?” Grayson's voice booms across the quiet of the night and now everyone knows exactly what that information was, not that they couldn't have guessed anyway.

“Not important now.” He watches as Stepahn puts a hand to Grayson's chest and the older boy bites at his lip trying to decide how pissed he should be. He flicks between looking like he's going to rip off Stephan's hand and a surprising softness. Mitchell recognizes it as the way his mum calms down his dad, it's a surprisingly soft and intimate thing to see Grayson on the receiving end of.

“What are you going to do?” Stephan asks and there's a shift in his posture and Grayson backs out of the conversation and waits impatiently against the brick wall.

“He's just going to apologise.” Rem Dogg offers and there's a laugh to his tone that's worrying.

“You're what?” Stephan's body shifts into full queen, hip jutted out, hand on hip, eyebrow arched.

“Going to apolo-”

“That's it!”Stephan's voice is all melodramatic disbelief.

“What do you want me to do? Stand outside her window playing Peter Gabriel?”

He instantly regrets it because Stephan looks suddenly very excited about this 'new plan'.

“I am _not_ doing that.” He looks down at Rem Dogg whose got his hand against him mouth, something in him appreciates that he's not just laughing outright.

Stephan makes a huge show of a sigh, “well are you at least going to declare your feelings for her before the movie starts?”

“What like get up on stage?”

“Yeah!” Stephan is enthralled with the idea. “you'll get up there right before the lights go down and yell out her name and tell her you love her.”

“Whoa.” Everything in his body twists and tightens at the word. The idea od her loving him is fine, nice even, it warms his skin and quickens the blood but the idea of him loving her like properly loving her is possibly the most frightening thing he's ever encountered.

“What?” Stephan sounds like he's getting steadily pissed with him and Grayson is behind him looking more and more amused, like he's just waiting for Stephan to get fed up so he can wail on him.

He didn't escape his brother just so Grayson could lay hands on him instead.

He takes a steadying breath and thinks about Jing, about the sound of her insults, the twist and cruelty of her mouth, the feel of her skin, the smell of her, how she grabbed onto him with hungry fingers and teeth.

“Fine.” he sighs.

“Fine?!” Rem Dogg's disbelief is palpable.

“Fine?” Stephan's voice is bouncing and happy and Grayson settles back against the wall.

“If it'll get her back I'll do it.” He's not sure that _back_ is the right word since he's the only one who thought they were together in the first place. Not one of his more shining moments. He had just thought they were beyond that hind of thing. But he supposes he forgot one thing, Jing, as mature, straight forward and undramatic as she is is still a fifteen year old girl, a state which is naturally self conscious and doubting.

“All right go inside before they get here then.” Stephan claps him on the back and propels him toward the door.

“He's going to make an arse of himself.” He can hear Grayson tell Stephan and he tries his best not to hear.

They get into the movie no problem, flash some fake id's, Rem Dogg doesn't even need to pull the wheelchair card. He buys Remmy the biggest bucket of buttery popcorn they have, it's like a mop bucket it's obscene.

They sit near the front and he thinks about how melodramatic this tactic is. Surely if she didn't answer any of his one hundred and seventeen phone calls the fact that he's willing to let all these strangers know that he _loves_ her isn't going to do it either.

Honestly he doesn't think Jing will go in for something so histironic but he hadn't thought she's be the kind to write out their names in the margins of her notebooks, they type to try and figure out which variation of his name she should take.

He prefers Harper-Chow. It's a better combination or sounds, although it means he'd have to take her name...at least that's what he thinks the order means.

_Mitchell Harper-Chow_

“What are you smiling at?” Rem asks a mouthful of popcorn. He's already cleaned out half the bucket and they've barely sat down.

He picks the bucket up and looks around Rem Dogg.

“What?”

“Where are you putting it all?”

“Where do you think?” Remmy starts to go off about how he's got a stomach of iron and how his mum says his legs must be hollow but honestly he isn't paying any attention because he can hear Jing. She's behind them somewhere switching between polite English and disapproving Chinese.

He can feel his stomach sink. He looks up at the small stage still all red velvet curtains and he can't do it.

He can't.

“I can't go up there.”

“Course you can't, it's a stupid idea.” Rem agree's, “just sit back and watch the movie, we'll think of something later. Something that doesn't involve borrowing my brothers stereo.” He tells him because he must see the worry on his face.

The lights go out and he can hear Stephan swear somewhere behind him.

“Come on!” he yells out but he's glued to his seat.

“Told you.” Grayson's heavy cigarettes and gravel voice rings clearly over the soft chatter as the curtains draw back and Mitchell sinks lower into his seat.

He peaks through the space between the seats, searching out Jing.

“Stop being such a pussy.” Rem grumbles cleaning the bottom of the

bucket.

“Shut up.” Mitchell's fist flies out and hits Rem Dogg right in his popcorn packed stomach.

Remmy makes a disgruntled noise and throws the empty bucket at his head.

-

The laughter of the entire house plus Ash fills the theatre. Mitchell looks over at Rem Dogg, who do not in anyway look alright.

“You okay? He whispers.

“Course.” Rem Dogg narrows his eyes but he has his arms wrapped around his stomach.

“No your not, I told you all that popcorn was going to make you sick.”

“I-” He makes a grabbing motion with his hand, his mouth suddenly a white line of effort.

He grabs the bucket off the floor and hands it to him, and just like that the room is filled with the sounds of laughter and heaving.

With a sigh Mitchell starts to wheel his sick friend out of the theatre.

His eyes focused on the door ahead of him he sees it open up and produce Jing.  
  
"Jing..."  
  
She shakes her head and quickly disappears back the way she came.  
  
"Jing!" He yells out and with a quick sorry he runs out after her leaving an in between vomit Rem Dogg in the middle of the aisle. He's in a wheelchair he has no doubt that someone in the place won't let him toss up all his insides in the middle of the aisle.  
  
The doors slam open around him and he can see her dart out the front doors out into the night.  
  
The crisp night air hits him like a slap in the face.  
  
"Jing please." He almost begs and she stops in the middle of the empty street.  
  
"What?" She asks and the word is sharp and cuts at him.  
  
"I'm sorry." The words tumble out of his mouth like they can't wait for him, "I'm sorry okay."  
  
"About what?" She asks like he needs to tell her, like she doesn't know. Of course she knows...but maybe the point of it is making sure he knows.  
  
"I'm sorry about David, I'm sorry I didn't say anything, I'm... I'm just sorry. Can you please come here." He tells her looking both ways down the street. The fact that she's out there is twisting his guts around, everything in his body is nervous and tight.  
  
"I won't." She crosses her arms and its all stern and forceful and straight edge, "why should I?"  
  
"Because you're standing in the middle of the fucking road!" The sentence comes out way more desperate than he wants it to but he can see headlights.  
  
"That's not what I mean." Her eyes pin him to the curb.  
  
"What are you talking about." His eyes dart past her to the lights. There are coming quickly, can't they see her?!  
  
Oh god the car. Everything in his body is freaking the fuck out.  
  
"Why should I move?"  
  
"Because I probably love you okay!" He yells out and if she was expecting anything it certainly wasn't that.   
  
A horn blast fills the air and Mitchell reaches out and grabs a hold of Jing's arm. With a desperate yank he pulls her up onto the sidewalk.  
  
"Mitchell!" Jing yells and he can see her getting father away from him as his boot slides off the curb with the force of his movement.   
  
Jing's hands grab out for him and he can feel the passing pressure of him slipping from her grip.  
  
He can see behind her where Rem Dogg and Chantelle are staring in shock at what's happening and he falls right into the oncoming car.  
  
There's a fleeting moment when he thinks Stephan will be sad he missed this because obviously this is the grand kind of gesture he wanted but then it's a flash of blinding pain and nothing.  
  
Just the far away sound of screaming and screeching tires and Chinese swearing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT: Moonshine  
> The final installment


	7. Moonshine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Moonshine: foolish talk/ideas, illicitly distilled or smuggled alcohol

There's a stolen ashtray filled with butts and a half empty mug of coffee on the open window sill.  
  
It's the dead of the night and she's staring at her phone.  
  
Mitchell's contact information is displayed on the screen but she's not sure if she can do it.  
  
She lights up yet another cigarette and with eyes closed presses the button.  
  
Putting the phone to her ear the ringing fills her senses trying to cover up the echoing sounds of car tires, it barely manages, she's sure that somehow she'll hear those sounds for the rest of her life.  
  
"Jing?" Mitchell's voice blasts across the line, tired and surprised but pleased somehow.  
  
Her mouth opens but all that pours out is blue smoke.  
  
"Are you okay?" He asks and she can't believe him. Is _she_ okay? He's the one who had his arm smashed to little pieces by a car. Sure the answer is no she's not but that's not really the point at all.  
  
She takes a breath and cringes as it shakes audibly.  
  
"Where are you? Do you want me to come get you? Are you at home?" He asks and his voice is all worry and she can almost see him get out of bed.  
  
"Are you okay?" She asks and she can feel the tears pour down her face and she prays they stay silent.  
  
"Yeah I'm fine, they doped me." She can hear the rattle of pills over the line as she watches the moonlight stretch across the dark of her room, "they put a cast on it." He sounds incredibly disappointed.  
  
"What's wrong with it?" She asks quietly brushing the tears off her face.   
  
_He's okay, everything's okay._  
  
He sighs, "it's pink."  
  
She can't help it, the laughter just pours out into the room, she puts a hand to her mouth quickly and waits to see if anyone in the house heard.  
  
The house stays silent.  
  
"It's not funny." He tells her, "they drugged me, I swear I was pointing at the black one."  
  
"Come over." The words spill out of her and she's surprised at how forward she sounds. She wants to see him, the fear that had wrapped around her core when the ambulance doors shut hadn't waned with the sound of his voice like she had thought it would. It was still wrapped around her like a snake. She needed to _see_ him, touch him, make sure he was solid.  
  
She reached up behind her and stubbed out the cigarette. She reached for her package...empty.  
  
"Meet me in the back yard with cigarettes." She hangs up. She won't go back on this decision once she sees him, sees that he's alive and fine, she'll be able to finally sleep.   
  
She hasn't slept all weekend, every time she tries she sees it. She's running on coffee, nicotine and fear alone.  
  
She stands up and finds that her legs are shaky. She didn't even change into her nightgown tonight, didn't want to lie to herself. She turns to the open window, leans out and decides against it. She just takes her coffee cup and lighter and makes her way carefully down stairs where she disables the alarm and motion sensors.  
  
There's old coffee sitting in the coffee pot and thankfully it's still warm. She looks at the sludge in her cup and hates herself a little bit.   
  
With coffee in hand she goes outside to wait.  
  
-  
  
It really is pink. It practically glows in the white yellow light of the moon.   
  
He tosses a red carton at her.  
  
She fumbles a little but manages to catch it.  
  
"A whole carton?"  
  
"You're out right?"  
  
"Yes, but where did you get a full carton at this time of night?"  
  
"You really want to know?"  
  
She shakes her head, "I don't do I?"  
  
"It'll take away the mystery." He smiles and it's huge and bright and loosens the worry in her gut.  
  
He moves to the picnic table and sits on the table top next to her. She can feel it shift under his weight and there's something so comforting about the whine of the old wood, he's substantial, real.  
  
She rips into the package and proceeds to light another cigarette, she's lost count of how many she's had.  
  
Too many.  
  
"Are you okay?" He asks and his unbroken arm moves and he brushes some of her hair behind her ear, the tips of his fingers grazing her skin.  
  
"I'm not the one that got hit by a car." She counters and damn her voice shakes on the word car.  
  
"Jing..."  
  
"I couldn't grab you," she looks down at her hands she had never had any reason to doubt her hands before, they had always done what she had asked them to do before but she could still feel the slide of skin and fabric.  
  
"No one blames you Jing." He tells her his finger tips on her skin again, little pinpoints of comfort. But what he says is wrong because she blames herself.  
  
"What if you had been seriously injured?"  
  
"I wasn't."  
  
"But-"  
  
"Jing I climbed out my second story window and down a tree and walked all the way here in the middle of the night. I'm fine. The only problem is how pink this cast is..." He waves the florescent thing around for good measure and it's almost blinding.  
  
She stubs out her cigarette and slides off the table, "come on then." She holds out her hand and is surprised at herself. He smiles and puts his hand in hers. His hand burns softly in her own and the twisting in her gut makes less sense as worry and more sense as teenage chemistry.  
  
Teenage chemistry something she had always thought just wasn't in the cards for her dominates her body now a days. She supposes this makes her a more well rounded person or some shit but mostly it just makes her a chain smoker.  
  
"Where are we going?" He asks but it's obvious he doesn't really care. His fingers lock with hers and they feel like they belong there.  
  
"I'm going to fix something for you."  
  
He just raises an eyebrow and follows her into the garage.  
  
She makes quick work of the alarm system and picks up the flashlight by the fuse box. She knows its in here somewhere. Her hand slips from his as she searches the shelves.

"What's this?"   
  
She turns to see what he's talking about, she shines the flashlight over the glass and rubber tube structure.  
  
It's just the still she made for her brother a couple of months ago, it's still working its fundamental magic turning the mush into moonshine.  
  
She shrugs, "It”s just a still."  
  
"Why do you have a working still in your garage?" He asks and there's a humorous awe to his voice.  
  
"Because mum didn't want it in the basement." She tells him plainly and his quiet laughter fills the garage and wraps around her. She can't find what she's looking for, the cans of spray paint are gone, "I can't find them."  
  
"Can't find what?" He moves to her side, eyes narrowed at the spotlight on the shelves.  
  
"I can't find the paint."  
  
"Paint?"  
  
She stands and sighs, "I was going to try and fix your cast." The disappointment must just be dripping off her because he wraps an unbroken arm around her shoulders and pulls her into him.  
  
"I figured I'd just go after it with a couple bottles of correction liquid. Give me something to do in English." He tells her honestly.  
  
His body is warm and comfortable and feels better than anything else she can think of at the moment. Although it might have a lot to do with how tired she is. He even smells awesome, like boy soap and tobacco and something she's not sure about.  
  
"I could do with a drink thou." He tells her and he pulls something thin and metal out of his jumper pocket.  
  
She pulls back and see's it's a flask. She wants to ask him what he's doing just carrying around a flask like he's an Irish priest or a Lord or something but she figures she doesn't want to know.  
  
"From the still?" She's not sure why she's surprised at all. She's just never understood the appeal of moonshine, or bathtub gin when inside the house in a little cabinet in the kitchen lives legitimate liquor, pretty bottles with regulations and factory conditions not something her and her brother slapped together because he was going through a MASH phase.  
  
He hands her the flask and shaking her head she goes over to the still. It looks good at least, the still is all shining glass and rubber hose that they had gotten from the hospital where her mother works.  
  
Why wouldn't they give some extra supplies to little Jing Chow, that straight edge, for use in a science project? It had been so stupid easy she doesn't know how they have anything left in the clinic, they would have given her morphine if she'd asked.  
  
She uncaps the flask, it sloshes around a little bit. She smells it, it is a whiskey of some variety. She doesn't know much about alcohol but she's pretty sure you shouldn't mix whiskey with what's basically bathtub gin.  
  
She puts it too her lips and drains the flask. Choking a little bit on the harsh edge of the liquid. It burns on the way down.  
  
"Are you alright?" He asks behind her she just nods in the dim of the garage and turns the tap to allow the 'gin' into the flask.  
  
She closes the tap, closes the flask and hands it back to him and heads back out to the picnic table.  
  
The fear in her heart, the fear that something had happened to him in the hospital, is gone now. Her gut twisting for completely different reasons as he sits down next to her. Its all body chemistry nervousness, all jumping electrons and sparking synapses.  
  
 _I probably love you_ he had said, he had yelled it out as he ripped her from the danger of the road.  
  
He's sitting in the near dark of her backyard next to her, the moon lighting them up for all to see, just leaning forward twisting the cap of the flask open as she sparks another cigarette into life.  
  
"How many have you had?" He asks looking at her out of the corner of his eyes.  
  
She looks down at the stick in her hand, watches the cherry burn red black, she has no idea what number this is. She's fairly certain she had two fresh packs at the beginning of the weekend (purchased from him weeks ago, he'd given her a discount).  
  
"A lot." Is what she answers. He takes the cigarette from her loose fingers and replaces it with the flask.  
  
"Too many you mean." He tells her, her cigarette hanging loosely from his mouth, his voice half blue smoke.  
  
She looks at the flask, it's etched, it's actually a good looking thing, all bright slender silver. It's got initials and a battalion number written across one side.  
  
"Whose is this?"  
  
"My grand dad's." He tells her and there's a softness to his tone that she likes. She puts the cool metal to her lips again and she can already smell the foresty smell of the gin.   
  
She takes a swig of the moonshine and almost dies.   
  
It tastes absolutely awful, positively disgusting.   
  
Choking a little bit she spits the clear liquid out across the grass.  
  
Mitchell is laughing at her.  
  
"It's rat poison." She tells him her voice flat like its the god honest truth.  
  
"It can't be that bad." He takes the flask from her hand and switching the cigarette to the fingers of his broken arm he takes what she guesses is supposed to be a manly swig from the flask...only to promptly spit the entire contents of his mouth back out onto the lawn.  
  
They are silent for a moment, he's using the cigarette to remove the taste from his mouth and she's incredibly jealous.  
  
"You're right." He tells her and dumps the contents of the flask onto the poor grass. She wonders briefly if it'll kill the grass but mostly she wants a cigarette but she's sure if she tries to light up another one he'll take that one too.  
  
She leans in towards him, he smells wonderfully of tobacco at the moment, the smell is hanging in the air around him.  
  
He turns to look at her and his face is incredibly close to hers and her stomach is twisting itself into knots and her heart is thumping angrily against her chest.  
  
"What are y-" she closes the small space between them. Her mouth on his and one hand on the rough wood of the table and the other on his neck pulling as lightly as possible, pulling him towards her, into her.  
  
He tastes like a gin joint, all terrible gin and forest and tobacco. But he moves into her with little effort on her part, the heavy awkward cast against her hip the cigarette tossed to the side to die in its own time, his fingers digging into her skin a little bit, his good arm at her back, pushing her towards him and the pressure of his mouth on hers is a little too hard and a little too rough but she's pretty sure she likes it that way.  
  
She doesn't have much to go on.  
  
she slides closer to him if possible, a leg tangled up in his and its all hot puffing breath as she pulls away to fill her lungs with oxygen. He's totally fine, his breathing is calm and it's no fair because she's heaving for breath like a women in a trashy novel. She vaguely recalls that he can hold his breath for four minutes.  
  
If they're going to snog she needs to work on her lung capacity.  
  
Not that she expects it to happen a lot. 

Why is she lying to herself, she expects this to happen a lot. Maybe she should quit smoking...no there has to be another way...she'll do some research.  
  
"You're not going to see some other bloke are you?" He asks, his eyes on her mouth, his good hand slides down her back and rests on the inside of the leg she has wrapped around his. His hand is hot and she can feel her gut tighten.  
  
"Are you going to ignore me for a week?" She asks and it pulls his eyes up to hers.  
  
"I said I was sor-" she doesn't let him finish his sentence. She has her mouth on his again, swallowing his words.  
  
He doesn't seem to mind in the slightest. His bad arm wrapped around her waist, using the hard cast to keep her close. His other hand is pulling her leg closer to him, like she's not close enough to him and honestly she agrees. He's trying to pull her leg around him, behind him and after a brief moment of bumping teeth she successfully manages to get her leg behind him.  
  
She has her hands on his back pushing him toward her. He still tastes like terrible gin and cigarettes but there's a hot breath taste to him as well. She's using her leg to push him into her and it pulls a noise from his throat a deep quiet little thing that twists her insides and heats her blood.  
  
She finally understands why Chantelle is so for this kind of thing. Her heart is pounding, slamming into her ribs, her lungs are burning begging for air and her body feels electric.  
  
He pulls away from her and his breath is coming in heavy puffs and his face is flushed and she finds that she loves it.  
  
"You sure about this?" He asks and she has no idea what he's talking about.   
  
"Sure about what?" She asks and his eyes widen in a way that is clearly meant to convey something. With his mouth off her, her body starts to slow down and it becomes clear what he's talking about as she looks at how they're situated.  
  
She has a leg wrapped around him her hands dragging him closer to her, the majority of his body is as close to her as possible. The only way he could possibly oblige her in getting closer would be...  
  
 _Oh my god!_

A string of mandarin flies out of her mouth and she see's his eyes narrow, flipping through his limited lexicon to find out what the hell she's saying. He pulls back, up away from her and there's suddenly a lot of space between them but he's still hovering above her slightly the bulk of his body between her legs.

  
She needs to move her leg because her skirt is almost a belt.

Chantelle would be so proud.  
  
In a panic she pulls her leg quickly up towards her body, but the frenzy of the movement and the fact that Mitchell's arm is no longer acting as a railing, the sudden lack of anything supporting her weight on the table causes her stomach to drop out.  
  
She hits the damp grass hard, _"fuck!"_ she yells out instinctively only to have her hands fly to her mouth.  
  
A light blasts into life on the second floor of her house, her parents room, as if it can detect profanity's.  
  
"Shit." Mitchell's voice comes in a deep breath of a thing as he slides off the picnic table to land in the grass next to her, "you okay?" He asks, his eyes on the light up window watching for the movement of her parents.  
  
"I'm fine." She tells him pulling her skirt down to a more modest length, "go, if my parents catch you..." The sentence drops off because she really has no idea what would happen. It'd be the first time a Chow child would be caught with a member of the opposite sex.  
  
He just nods like this is old hat to him, "I'll see you in the morning." He tells her with a bright smile before standing, adjusting his trousers and booking it down the driveway and around the corner of her house.  
  
She lays there in the damp grass that smells of moonshine for a few minutes, her body is so tired and her mind is finally getting with the program, the loss of Mitchell's body heat creates a sad ball of feelings in her gut and with the heat of his hands gone she just feels silly out here in the early morning.  
  
Her mother catches her turning the alarm for the garage back on. She rattles off an excuse about how she thought she had heard something strange and was worried about the still. Her mother gave the structure a worrying glance before walking her back into the house and up to her bedroom.  
  
"I know you're having trouble after what happened Saturday night but you have to try and get some sleep. I set that boys arm myself Jing, I assure you he's alright." She pushes some of her daughters hair out of her face her mothers fingers warm and comforting against her rapidly cooling skin, "promise me you'll try and get some sleep."  
  
"I promise."   
  
She actually keeps her promise. She lays down on the bed and barely gets the blankets over her body before she's gone.   
  
\---  
  
Her alarm goes off at the regular time and she's dead girl walking. She pulls on her uniform and starts to pull her unruly hair into the strict braid she comfortable with.  
  
There's a knock on the front door. She leans out her bedroom door, curious as to who could be at the door this early in the morning. A business partner of her father's? Someone from the hospital for mum?  
  
"I'm here for Jing." It's Mitchell's voice. What the hell is he doing here? Isn't this returning to the scene of the crime? She peeks around the corner to see her father looking down at him. Mitchell's standing in the doorway in his school uniform and bright pink cast like he does this every day.  
  
"You're the boy that got hit by the car." Her father tells him. Mitchell waves the cast at him as confirmation, "thank you." Her father tells him and there's a deep gratitude to his voice that warms her heart.  
  
"I'd do it again." Mitchell tells her father quietly like he doesn't want her to hear him.  
  
 _"Jing your boyfriends here!”_ her father yells up the stairs.  
  
She almost falls down the stairs but she doesn't correct her father. Mitchell's face is flushed and he's suddenly found his cast very interesting.   
  
Oh my god he knows exactly what her father called him.  
  
And he didn't correct him either.  
  
She picks up her backpack and books and leaves the house, her eyes focused on the sidewalk in front of her and not the fact that Mitchell is walking beside her. His good hand hanging down close to her.  
  
Is it supposed to mean something? Is she supposed to hold his hand? Is this how things are going to be now? He's going to pick her up in the morning and there going to skip to school hand in hand? She doesn't think she can stand it.  
  
She shifts her books to one arm and drops the other so it's swinging close to his. If he wants to hold her hand fine, she'll give it a shot.  
  
He doesn't take her hand! What the hell? Surely that's what that was!  
  
She takes a breath and flicks out her hand to grab his.  
  
There! Now there holding hands... It's nice. His hand is warm and his fingers slide easily between hers. Yeah she could do this. She looks over at him he looks tired but pleased.  
  
"Tired?" She asks, she knows all about that she's had maybe four hours of sleep all weekend. Her body is fuelled entirely by the cup of coffee she had for breakfast.  
  
"It was a lot harder getting back into the house than out...........so I'm your boyfriend am I?"  
  
"You could have said no." She counters and drops his hand. Holding hands is okay but she really needs a smoke. She longs for the days where she can have one with her morning coffee.  
  
He looks oddly hurt until she sparks up.  
  
"Just say I'm your boyfriend Jing." He sighs irritated.  
  
"You say it." She tries to push up her glasses with her book hand and several textbooks tumble to the sidewalk.  
  
"You need a bigger bag." He tells her as he stoops to pick up her textbooks and slides them right into his messenger bag.  
  
"You don't need to do that." She tries to take her books back.  
  
He slaps her hands away, "Just let me act like your boyfriend, fuck." She steps back from him. His cheeks are flushed and he's jaw is set and he's not looking at her.  
  
"So your my boyfriend then."  
  
"Obviously." he rolls his eyes but won't meet her gaze.  
  
With the books out of her hands she slips her hand back into his. She is happy but tired, the longer she's awake the heavier she feels, like the air is pushing down on her.  
  
"You okay?" He asks removing his hand from hers and plucking the cigarette from her mouth.  
  
Her eyes narrow as she watches him use up the end of her cigarette. How dare he? She paid good money for ...oh wait, she'd gotten that carton for free. She wonders briefly if she'll be getting more things for free but a completely different mental image of 'payment' comes to her mind, his mouth and hands and..."Tired." She tells him, her skin is hot and her heart is slamming around like a drunkard.  
  
"I'll be right back." He tells her.  
  
The bell is about to ring.  
  
'Class' is about to start.  
  
She sighs and heads into form K alone.  
  
The room had only moments ago been alive with noise. Oh god they were talking about her.  
  
"Where's Mitchell?" Chantelle asks and there's a suggestiveness to her voice that's impossible to miss.  
  
"How am I supposed to know." She tells the room quickly, making her way to her desk.  
  
"I have it on good authority that you walked to school together." Stephan offers.  
  
She's not paying attention she's searching through her bookbag for books that aren't in there...there in Mitchell's bag.  
  
"Everyone knows you mean Grayson saw them you bender." Rem Dogg calls out from the back of the room. She wonders briefly if Rem Dogg will be in her corner now. She sets her bag down, it probably doesn't, or at the very least only when it suits him (she's seen how bizarre Mitchell and Rem Dogg's friendship is).  
  
She's so tired, she's just not up to the questions. She's just not. God she hopes Alfie's hungover she could really do with a nap.  
  
The room gets quiet again and she looks up to see Mitchell in the doorway.  
  
"Go on then." He tells them and the class almost collectively bursts into laughter over the bright pink cast attached to his arm.  
  
"How high were you when you picked that out?" Joe asks.  
  
Mitchell looks at him, "I could taste sound." He walks down the aisle, puts a can of energy drink on her desk and proceeds to pull her text books out of his bag.  
  
Alfie stumbles in, hood up, hung over...possibly still drunk.  
  
He stops dead and points at Mitchell, "what happened to you?" There's a slight slur to the words.  
  
"You mother was a little rough." Is what falls from Mitchell's mouth.  
  
"He got hit by a car, Sir." Stephan supplies with a head tilt and far too much fabulous swagger for so early in the morning.  
  
"What'd you go and do that for?"  
  
"Because Jing was in the road, sir, it was dead romantic." Chantelle offers and it brings a heat to her skin and Mitchell is focused on figuring out which history text is hers. It pretty obvious to her, all the people in his text have been given ridiculous moustaches.  
  
If anyone wants to say something about how Mitchell carried her books to school they stay quiet and she's glad it's bad enough that they keep bringing up the accident.  
  
With their text books sorted out Mitchell returns to his seat and proceeds to have Rem Dogg make fun of his cast. Everything starts to settle back into the way its always been in form K, a little too loud and barely educational.  
  
She let's out a sigh as Alfie writes _Hangover Class_ on the board and settles in for a nap. Across the aisle Mitchell has opened a bottle of correction liquid and is attacking his cast with it.  
  
Chantelle twists her chair around and sets her head down on Jing's desk.  
  
"You okay?" She asks in a whisper, "you look dead tired."  
  
"I am."  
  
"Didn't sleep last night?"  
  
"Not really." She makes the mistake of looking over at Mitchell, she's worried there might be a blush to her skin.  
  
Chantelle's eyes widen, "you slept with Mitchell!" She doesn't whisper and she sits up straight in her chair and everyone around them sits up.  
  
Mitchell spills the bottle of correction liquid across his desk and Alfie's wheelie chair shoots out from under him.  
  
 _"No! We didn't..."_ she looks over at him and his face is flushed and her skin is hot and her heart is thumping violently and the feel of his mouth and skin and hands comes blasting across her body.  
  
"No we didn't-" Mitchell tells the class but the way he falters and the flush in his skin obvious lends itself well to a lie. She wonders if he's thinking of the same thing she is. That they almost had, that she would...  
  
Cat calls fill the room.  
  
"Just because you're a slag doesn't mean everyone is!" Mitchell yells over the noise of the classroom at Chantelle.  
  
"We haven't even been dating for a full day yet." She tells the room before slipping into mandarin, _"this is your fault!"_ she looks directly at him.  
  
 _"My fault?! How?”_  
  
She doesn't get to tell him because Joe rolls a tv into the room. She hadn't even noticed he was gone.  
  
"Thank you Joe." Alfie is standing oddly straight, he doesn't look hungover anymore. He looks stone sober and she wonders if it was shock. He reaches towards the shelf of VHS tapes.  
  
And oh my god he isn't...  
  
God he is...  
  
"In light of recent...events." She can feel her skin get hot, "we will be watching some videos."  
  
Alfie pops in a video and terrible eighties music blasts across the room. An older women, grey hair and lab coat is standing in front of a chalk board and there's a small group of teenagers in front of her.  
  
She writes the topic of the video on the chalk board: SEX  
  
 _"for the love of god"_ she grumbles.  
  
She looks over at Mitchell whose looking at her. He hands Katie a folded piece of paper and she drops it to the floor between their desks and kicks it over to her.  
  
She let's her pencil roll off the desk and picks up the piece of paper. She unfolds it in her lap.  
  
 _Tonight Parson's Woods. Bring the 'gin', we'll use it for lighter fluid._ _  
_ _It has to be good for something_  
  
She shakes her head but they both know that she'll give in. An excited warmth spreads across her body, she has a boyfriend, (not that she had really been craving one), they are going on a date tonight and even Alfie can't ruin the bubbling feeling of nervous body chemistry, although he almost manages it when he changes the tape to one about sexually transmitted diseases.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading. If you like this please take a look at my other Jing/Mitchell work, they are lonely.

**Author's Note:**

> next: Pestilent


End file.
